At Roadmap 2012, Instagram CEO and co-founder Kevin Systrom let us in on what makes Instagram popular beyond the product itself: speed.

He believes that increased speed—both of the mobile broadband and the software itself— not only improves the user experience but also makes people want to use the product more. In the case of Instagram, it makes users want to take and share more photos. “We’re getting to a point where we’re understanding how to allow people to produce more content every single day,” Systrom said.

While wireless broadband and LTE are demonstrating increasingly faster speeds, for now app makers are having to compensate on the back end. Instagram moves its process along by uploading photos in the background before while users caption them.

“If you simply cut the [waiting] time in half, if you shave off a second from that time, you actually get increased usage,” he said. “Because you’re not sitting at the bus stop waiting for something to load. You can actually reliably decide to open it and have your content ready,” he said.